<<  -- 5 --  Bill Newman    MAESTRO

'I amused myself twice to do "Un hommage de Puccini" : once in The Consul when the Italian woman sings - but you can hear the difference between Puccini's and my style. Then, in The Last Savage  (1963) when he is caught and they don't know whether his nationality might be Italian - so there is a very Puccinian phrase'.

Character projection concerns the critic who wrote 'Actuality, shown sometimes in a context of realism which is almost naïve, has not goaded the composer to the sort of commitment which forced audiences to identify with Magda Sorel in a way they never have with Annina (The Saint of Bleecker Street).'  I find them both equally very strong. 'Two characters who are completely different - one in an opera where there is a human conflict; the other is political and expresses a human problem - it's universal, going on even now. The second is nearer to me because it expresses the duality and conflict between my faith and knowledge. I often say that I am like Jacob still fighting with the Angel.'

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